The Proving (36 page)

Cass shut the door and went to the co-pilot’s seat, dutifully powering on the engine. It hummed to life under their boots.

“Who’s the comm from?” Skye asked, leaning in beside Cleo. She saw the name blinking on the holoscreen and felt her heart drop.

“It’s your pops,” Cleo said. “Ready?”

Skye shook her head. “Is our shield up?”

“Not yet,” Cleo said. “The battery drained during our little detour. The solar plates on the roof need to suck up some sunlight.”

Skye took a deep breath. “Put him onscreen.”

Cleo punched a button. Skye’s father appeared on the holoscreen, his image a deceptive three dimensions. His face looked worn and haggard, less primped and proper than when he’d seen them off the previous morning.

“Father,” she said, fighting the urge to say more. She had so much she wanted to tell him. She’d killed multiple Specters. She’d saved the life of a free citizen. She’d accomplished more than most Spartans did in their entire lifetimes and now he would finally be proud of her. His eyes would look on her with the same warmth they shined on Cassy.

“Are you safe? Is Cassidy safe?”

“Yes,” she answered quickly. “We intercepted a distress call . . .”

“The city is under attack.”

“Sacrebleu,” Cleo whispered, falling back in her chair.

Skye felt her eyes sting with hot tears. She fought them back. “How?”

“Specters moving underground.” Father shook his head. “We don’t know how, exactly, but it’s happening all over the world. Every major city is experiencing the same attack. It started last night and even now in broad daylight, Specters are infiltrating sections of the city. They’re going directly for the Phenocyte reactors.”

A coordinated strike.
“But that’s impossible . . .”

“It’s possible and it’s happening,” he snapped. “Now listen to me, and listen carefully. I’m sending you the coordinates of an airbase located ninety kilometers away. It’s a Level Two security clearance, and the Persians in your Coterie have been granted clearance.”

“We can come back,” Skye said.

“What?!” Cleo shouted. “No, we can’t. We really, really can’t.”

“I can go back,” Skye said, leaning in close to her father’s image. The only thing missing was his smell: a musky, nose-stinging aftershave. “There’s another Tumbler here, Father. A rescue mission that failed.”

“Were that I could see you and Cassidy fight with me,” he said with just a hint of remorse. More emotion than Skye had heard in his voice in a long, long time. “But these orders come from Parliament, and you will all obey them.”

“I killed a Specter,” Skye blurted out. “More than one, Father. I can come back. I can help!”

He shook his head. “You will go to the airbase and await further instructions.”

His image disappeared.

Skye turned to Cleo. “Bring him back.”

“I can’t raise the secure channel,” Cleo said. “I mean, I could with a little time, but we don’t have much of that, do we?”

Skye shook her head, staring down at the warm holo-bulb. Every muscle in her body wanted to get out and jump into the other Tumbler. Father had to know of all she had accomplished. He needed to see the daughter he had raised.

“What’s going on?” Gabriel asked from the back.

“Everything’s bad,” Cleo said. “Monumentally bad.”

“Is everyone gonna die?” Reza asked.

“We’ve been ordered to go to an airbase,” Skye said, forcing the words out. “So that’s what we’re going to do. Cleo, plot us a course. Cass, pull up the navigation.”

“But is everyone gonna die?” Reza asked again.

“We’re going to have to move without shields,” Cleo said. “Otherwise, our battery will be drained, even with the solar plates catching sun.”

“So be it.” Skye sat in the driver’s seat, pulling up the control panel and fighting back a flurry of emotions. The glass screen lit up, providing her with a readout of the vehicle’s main functions. The solar panel on the roof was operating at only six percent efficiency thanks to the morning light. The rear right axle had a hairline fracture, no doubt the result of last night’s escape. The condenser coil inside the VR cannon was fried.

And about a dozen other things.

She revved the engine, feeling it hum underneath her feet. “What do you have for me, Cassy?”

Her brother pulled up a blue line on the windshield. It curved left, guiding her out of the small lot in front of the research facility. Skye slid her hands into the manual control slots, squeezing the twin grips. She turned the vehicle around, feeling the heavy wheels crunch on a discarded VR rifle. The blue line guided them along the old broken-down road through the forest. It had an eerie stillness to it, a calm beauty that made Skye’s entire body tingle.

In the city, there’s chaos. Complete, utter chaos. Screaming. Video ads going out. Autotaxis malfunctioning. Fires. Death. And here . . . everything’s calm.

“Goodbye, super top secret research facility,” Cleo murmured. “And thanks for the horrible memories.”

“I’m slowing us down,” Cassy said quietly. The engine’s moan softened under Skye’s feet. She fought the urge to nudge the manual acceleration pedal with her right foot.
Let Cass take care of that. It’s his role as copilot. Calm your nerves. You have one direct order: get to the airbase.

And then you can do whatever you want.

She glanced at her brother. The boy was biting a knuckle but at least his eyes were on the control panel, monitoring the damaged road; he tapped on his console, and with each tap a new red dot appeared on the road, identifying a pothole. She’d expected to coddle him during this mission, and yet here he was doing what needed to be done. Enough training had stuck, to hell with what his dejected instructors told Father. She could still remember listening from her room while Father and Mother spoke with Cassidy’s combat instructor. “No instinct,” the instructor had said. His evaluation had been met with a cold silence.

He was wrong. Cassidy can take care of the others. I can go back and fight alongside Father.

The blue line ran up to the old highway road, leading them west. If they turned east, they would head back toward the emergency supply depot. If they went past the emergency supply depot, they would reach the city limits in a handful of hours.

A city under siege. Skye had seen enough photos and video feeds in her training classes from the first Specter attacks. Entire cities overrun. Gray-skinned bodies of civilians lying in the streets. Power went out and fires started and emergency sprinkler systems malfunctioned under the uniform stress. Streets went quiet as people hid anywhere they could. Spartan soldiers moved between damaged autotaxis and share-cars, fighting a ground war with an army of ghosts.

And now it’s happening all over again.

“Wait, what are we doing?” Gabriel called out from the back. “Why aren’t we going back to the city?”

“Are you kidding?” Cleo asked, incredulous. “Uh, maybe because the city is under attack?!”

“That’s exactly why we need to be there!” Gabriel exclaimed. In the weak reflection in her glasses, Skye could see him unbuckle and walk to the front of the Tumbler, his hand grasping the stationary bar along the ceiling. “Skye, we need to get back there. We need to help!”

“We’re following orders,” Skye said. The words tasted rotten on her tongue. She kept her eyes on the road, steering the vehicle left to avoid a pothole that had become home to a bulbous fern shrub with bright green leaves. Ahead, the trees thinned out, giving way to wild knee-length grass and beyond that: a lake. A beautiful blue lake with tall mountains watching over it.

“They need us,” Gabriel urged, grabbing the back of Skye’s chair. “Skye, every gun will count. If what your father said was true . . . we can make a difference. We’ve already proven that.”

“And what about your sister,” Skye growled. It infuriated her, knowing that Wei was laying in the rear of the Tumbler without her brother. Her brother, standing here and telling Skye — a Spartan, of all people! — that the right thing to do was fight. She knew that already. But Gabriel wasn’t a fighter. And neither was Wei.

“How about we trust the adults on this?” Cleo said with a frantic, cracked screech. “Especially the Spartan elder who knows way, way more than us about what’s going on? Eh? Doesn’t that seem like a
totally
better idea than driving back into a city overrun with Specters?”

“The adults?” Gabriel’s grip on Skye’s chair tightened. She could hear from the sound of his voice that he’d turned toward the Persian but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the damaged road now. It had been repaved at some point but a single tree near the edge of the asphalt had chosen to play the role of the antagonist, letting one thirsty root creep under the road, cracking it. The exposed roots rose up like tentacles sitting on the surface of seawater.

“Yeah, the adults,” Cleo said. “As in: the ones who aren’t blubbering emotional wrecks at any given moment.”

“The same adults who were running tests on Specters in a top-secret facility?” he shot back. “The same adults who intentionally hide the truth from us and make us study decades-old textbooks about creatures no one fully understands? The same adults who told us late at night when we were afraid of ghosts that the Specters could never penetrate the shields?”

“OK, so maybe it sounds bad when you put it like that!” Cleo shouted. “But I don’t want to go back!”

Tahlia and Reza began crying. When Wei joined in — gentle, hiccuppy sobs — Gabriel finally released his grip from Skye’s chair and returned to the back of the Tumbler. She took a deep breath, glancing at Cass. He glanced back, grimacing and glassy-eyed. But he wasn’t crying. He was a Spartan, through and through.

They came upon the lake. The road led to an old parking lot and a quaint wooden lodge overrun with weeds and thick, green brush that had begun to crawl up the rotten gray wood exterior. Dirt and moss had accumulated on the roof. The windows were broken; soft, dark green branches jutted out and reached up toward the Ring. The sign — ACAI LAKE CAMPGROUND — had faded, with dark black stains covering the G and U. A sandy beach ran along the shore. A single white lifeguard stand sat in the center of the beach, its paint peeled and the wood covered in black rot.

Skye kept the Tumbler on the right side of the road, unable to fight the urge to tap the accelerator pedal. She didn’t want to see this frozen memory. This place was a reminder of what things were like before the Specters. A terrible thought echoed inside her head:

Get used to the sight.

The images flashed inside his mind one after the other, like a video feed that had been looped: the Sebecus Specter knocking him over, its terrifying jaws opening, revealing two rows of sharp, incandescent teeth. Its scales, bristling as it used its muscles to press down on the shield protecting Seamus’s body.

The shield meter in the lower corner of his right lens, flashing yellow.

And the one terrible thought playing over and over in his head:
it’s a ghost it’s a ghost it’s a ghost it’s a ghost.

And then Skye had shot the creature, and it had turned and went after her. Seamus had drawn his pistol but was too afraid to shoot it more than once, sure it would turn and attack him again.

And then they were both gone. He sat in the hallway, alone, breathing deeply. Two hundred and twenty-six breaths, every single one he remembered. And then Skye was back. He’d thought about how he might excuse his cowardice but she’d simply run past him. He’d followed her back to the loading bay, where all hell had broken loose.

He remembered every moment. Every second leading up to the attack on Wei. In his mind, he could see the look on her face as she looked into the hatch of the shipping container: surprise, mixed with fear. Historians weren’t taught to speculate on expressions — they were expected to be as objective as possible. Don’t guess. Facial features were important only in context.

In the case of Wei, perhaps, it would be important to note that something inside the shipping container had frightened her to the point that she hadn’t noticed the Manteidos Specter emerging from the closed steel shutters at the front of the loading bay.

But he may never have to deliver a report at all.

Things were different now, and as a good Historian, Seamus turned to history as his guide. When the Specters first arrived, the intense shockwave of the Ring’s initial orbit sent tens of thousands of the creatures to earth. Cities were unprepared. They had no weapons that could destroy the creatures, and in the first few years chaos ensued. By day, they congregated, strategized, and helped the wounded. By night, they ran for their lives. Fires seemed to hurt — or at least
distract
— the creatures and so it was possible to at the very least slow down their onslaught.

Then, Clan Athens developed a prototype for a proton device that could disrupt the Specters’ energy signature, and with the help of Clan Persia, they weaponized the technology. Clan Sparta used the first few weapons to carve out a safe zone, and from there the War Machine’s gears began to grind. A factory was set up. Blueprints were transmitted via satellite. Clan Sparta coordinated, and with each new safe zone established, humanity gained a foothold. Free citizens rebuilt and repaired during the day, and during the night they hid while the clans fought and died to keep what humanity had won back.

At first, it was thought the Specters might be planning. Coordinating. But there was no pattern to the way they fell from the sky. It took years to understand the truth. Years to design a shield system that would keep the creatures at bay by propelling them with a positive pulse charge. Years more to develop new Phenocyte reactors to provide continuous power for the shields. The Specters seemed to grow more aggressive — speculation, not part of the
official
history — and at one point the prototype shield protecting the ruined city of Neo Franco failed.

The Historians made their tally as best they could, counting first the inhabitants of the restored cities, adjusting for new birth rates, then assumed a 99.9% death rate for those left outside of the shields.